From handling of the chessmen you infer the secret springs of human character. To pluck the enemy chessman between your fingers and replace it with your own reveals the cultivated, well-bred killer who cannot stand the sight of blood; knock the chessman over with a small click of wood on wood tells of an aesthetic craving for the fatal instrument, of one more passionate than violent; to push the piece from its intended square is signal of aggressive character and plainly indicates that power is the motive for committing murder; some will hold the captured piece and caress it nervously: these...
From handling of the chessmen you infer the secret springs of human character. To pluck the enemy chessman between your fingers and replace it with yo...
"There's a gap between where / an electron is and where it might be / and that's the only real work-place. / You occupy that office of possibility." Where are you in that space between the electron and the galaxy, and how do you find yourself there? Particles asks this question and answers it by asking more questions, conveying both the mystery and the uncertainty of the universe.
"There's a gap between where / an electron is and where it might be / and that's the only real work-place. / You occupy that office of possibility." W...
At night we swim / following the fence: / diverted / we enter the net / shaped like a heart / and in the heart the hook / guides us to the back A stunning unfolding of memory, Wavelengths of Your Song juxtaposes a childhood in the northern Canadian wilderness with the adventures of an international creative life. Genuine environmentalism is at the heart of this collection. Migrations of birds and humans lend their songs to the vivid writing and a tangible, sensory reality emerges from their sounds. Music by Beethoven and Rzewski, paintings by Norval Morrisseau and Kandinsky, and writing by...
At night we swim / following the fence: / diverted / we enter the net / shaped like a heart / and in the heart the hook / guides us to the back A stun...
From "Anna's Lovers" Our houses glow both from within and on the outside: their night lights and an almost perfect and wintry moon. The phrase "but for now" means among other things "making do," as if we had to settle for the bare minimum. In But for Now, Gordon Johnston presents poems where the mortal world is more than enough because there is more to it than the merely mortal and where it is possible to hear beyond the outmoded clanking of inherited religious vocabularies. These poems find moments of grace in chance occurrences and through a wide range of styles and methods, they...
From "Anna's Lovers" Our houses glow both from within and on the outside: their night lights and an almost perfect and wintry moon. The phrase "but fo...
"To be able to pry apart: / this is object, this is subject / even though (confusion begins) / he can be both. Difficult then / to stand at the mirror and reflect: / I am this. This is what I am." Some Dance is a meditation on stories, the intersection of stories, of things made up, of things imagined, and of things lived - perhaps. Tricks played by memory, scrambling events from life with fiction, are a constant. Ricardo Sternberg seeks a fixed point from which to understand the world, but finds no resolution save for another poem. Everything is in flux, unstable, and leads to unexpected...
"To be able to pry apart: / this is object, this is subject / even though (confusion begins) / he can be both. Difficult then / to stand at the mirror...
"My best actions are a parrot's / bright feathers in the dark jungle / trying to catch your eye / with the colour and flight / which says, I am here / and trying to do what s right." Do we make the universe, or does it make us? In Outside, Inside, Michael Penny positions each of us at the centre of this mystery, but lightens this presumption with irony and word-play that is as entertaining as it is thought-provoking. The three hundred short, linked poems in this collection begin with a complaint about the unknowability of what's outside and what's inside, but then shift to an engagement with...
"My best actions are a parrot's / bright feathers in the dark jungle / trying to catch your eye / with the colour and flight / which says, I am here /...
Although relatively few First Nations joined the 1885 Metis insurgence, the Canadian government reacted punitively, instituting draconian "Indian" policies whose ill-effects continue to resonate today. The Winter Count traces these developments alongside another narrative - the debate over the sanity of Metis leader Louis Riel. Dilys Leman weaves original poems and reconstituted archival texts, including medical reports, diaries, treaties, recipes, even a phrenological analysis, to create a montage that both presents and disrupts official history. Her narrative questions politically expedient...
Although relatively few First Nations joined the 1885 Metis insurgence, the Canadian government reacted punitively, instituting draconian "Indian" pol...
Walk away before you are threadbare / Preserve your strength, preserve your curly hair / For others' use. Least I can do. / Let your fabric relax, snap back to mold / Another body and reveal its gold. A collection of 120 sonnets in eight parts, Trio reveals, frame by frame, a married fortysomething female narrator in love with two younger men - an intellectual and a dancer - and torn between the claims of body and mind. In the tradition of Renaissance sonnet sequences from Petrarch onward, the narrator's love objects are constantly before her eyes, and thus before ours, creating compassion,...
Walk away before you are threadbare / Preserve your strength, preserve your curly hair / For others' use. Least I can do. / Let your fabric relax, sna...
See her? / Steadfast and firm her / branches graze the mantle of quiet clouds / as she elaborates her claim Haunted by indifference toward systemic violences and the disregard endured by those people labelled as "problems," nancy viva davis halifax s poems articulate the constraints of discredited lives. Conveying her experiences witnessing homelessness, poverty, disability, and chronic illness on the streets and within women's emergency shelters, davis halifax orients readers to recognize ongoing suffering in our society. One poem, a purl of four words, reminds the reader that language...
See her? / Steadfast and firm her / branches graze the mantle of quiet clouds / as she elaborates her claim Haunted by indifference toward systemic vi...